La Belle et la Bete
by Bluegrass Belle
Summary: When Jason can't pay a debt, Sookie trades her unique "services" to the Sheriff of Area 5 in order to save her brother. A classic story of a Beauty who could tame a Beast in a not-so-classic setting. alternate history Eric/Sookie  M for language&sex
1. The Deal

I was just settling down on the couch after a long night at work when the phone rang. Sighing, I looked at the clock. It was 1:37 AM, so I reckoned it had to be something important. It had better be, anyway, for interrupting my well-earned hot cocoa and Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode before bed. I paused the DVD right as Buffy was about to stake a lumpy-faced vampire chick in the heart. In real life, vampires don't get ridgy faces like that. They're alot harder to spot. They look just like any other people- well, to normal folks anyway. I'm not exactly normal and I can spot a vampire in a crowd like a candle in the dark, no problem. That's how I met my first boyfriend, Bill.

The townsfolk called him Vampire Bill, because he was the only vampire we had ever seen here in Bon Temps. It's a pretty small town, even for the back woods of Louisiana. Bill made a big stir when he came back to live in his ancestral home right across the cemetary from me. I know that sounds strange, and I'll go ahead and warn you now that just about everything to do with my life is strange, but the Bon Temps cemetery is situated on the big rise of land between my property and the old Compton manor. Bill and I were broken up because- well, just because. There are alot of things I'd like to say about Bill, but my Gran always told me not to speak ill of the dead. Not that he was dead. Well, I guess, technically he was. But he was definitely dead to me. I won't go more into that right now.

I went into the kitchen and looked at the caller ID. It was Hoyt Fortenberry. I crinkled my brow and picked up the phone. "Hello, Stackhouse residence," I greeted. Really, I was the only Stackhouse in residence here, so I don't know how necessary it was to say that. But I still did, out of habit. My Gran hadn't been gone that long, God rest her soul.

"Uh, yeah, hey Sookie. It's Hoyt." Hoyt sounded nervous.

"Hi, Hoyt. It's pretty late, can I help you with anything?" I was always polite, even when I was annoyed. That was the mark of a good Southern woman, my Gran always said.

"Well, Sook, I just got this weird call from Jason." Jason was my brother. Hoyt was his best friend, so it didn't seem odd to me that he would be giving him weird calls on a Friday night. Lord knows I've gotten my fair share of those drunk calls from Jason. Not that Jason was an alcoholic or anything, he just wasn't the type to sit at home with a good movie on a weekend night. He liked the girls and he liked to party.

"What's up?" I asked to move the conversation along when it seemed like Hoyt was hesitating with what he wanted to tell me.

"Jason asked me to come to Shreveport with fifteen thousand dollars," he said, shocking me right out of my socks.

"What?" was all I could think to say.

"He said he was at a bar called Fangtasia and he needed me to bring him fifteen thousand dollars before sunrise," Hoyt sounded as confused as I was.

"Fangtasia?" I had never heard of it.

"Sounded like a vamper bar to me. I don't know what Jason's doin' there and I ain't got that kinda money and he knows that, but I reckoned you could go get him home since you, uh, seem to be pretty friendly with those types."

Did he think since I had dated one vampire I was in their magic circle of trust or something? I shook my head in annoyance. "Ok, Hoyt, I'll take care of him. Thanks for calling," I said.

We said our goodnights and hung up. I changed out of my Tweety Bird night shirt into some jeans and a Bon Temps Hawks football tee, pulled my hair up in a loose pony-tail, grabbed my purse and was out the door in two shakes of a lamb's tail. On the dark drive to Shreveport I turned up the local country station and sang my heart out to distract myself from the nervous thoughts in my head. By the time I pulled up at the bar, I was feeling only a little less panicked than before.

I could hear the music thumping when I started for the front entrance and saw the name Fangtasia above the door in jazzy red letters. There were young people smoking outside, dressed to the nines in black leather and gaudy make-up, some of them with red dots painted on their necks that I figured were supposed to look like puncture wounds where a vampire had bitten. Fangbangers is what they called them. This wasn't your friendly neighborhood family bar and grill like Merlotte's, where I worked. I made it through the door after paying the entrance fee (Damn you, Jason, you just cost me another ten dollars besides what I paid in gas to get here!), ignoring the condescending look the spikey-haired door attendant cast on my outfit. I wasn't here to party, I was here to drag my good-for-nothing pain in the ass brother out of trouble, like always.

Immediately, I was accosted with the the thoughts of a hundred other people pressing in on my poor mind and made an effort to throw up my shields to block them out. It didn't completely get rid of the awful racket, it just made the thoughts seem distant and muffled like I was hearing them from underwater. Oh, did I mention I was a telepath? I can hear people's thoughts. It's pretty annoying most of the time. Well, pretty much all the time. I often wish I didn't have this curse. But you take what the good Lord gives you and you make the most of it, that's what my Gran said.

I looked around for Jason, but didn't see him anywhere in the crowd of people writhing on the dance floor or even at the bar propositioning some girl he just met. I went up to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic to get the bartender to talk to me. Plus, I just really needed a drink.

"Hey, I was wondering if I could ask you a question!" I told him with what I hoped was a disarming smile.

He was a vampire, I could tell from the faint glow of his skin and the strange empty air space around his mind, where I could normally sense the origin of his thoughts if he was human. That's what I get from vampires, just empty space. Their minds are closed to me, for some reason. I'm no scientist, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that they're dead. No detectable brainwaves, or something. I don't know.

Quick as a blink, his face appeared before me with a dangerous hiss, his lips pulled back to show me his fangs. The fangbangers around me flinched back with a chorus of gasps and a spike of lust you didn't need telepathy to sense. I just blinked back at him owlishly. With vampires, you can't show fear. It just gets them excited. I know that from experience. I couldn't help my over-sized smile, though, the one that made me look a bit unstable. It was a nervous habit.

When he failed to get the reaction he wanted out of me, I guess, he slapped my drink down on the bar in front of me. I drank it at once. He didn't move away, just kept mixing drinks and glaring a bit at me. I took that as the go-ahead.

"Have you seen a man in here tonight about my age, blonde-ish hair, blue eyes, might look a bit like me? He's my brother." The vamp bartender just raised an eyebrow at me cryptically. Ok, I guess he probably saw a hundred guys in here every night, how would he remember one in particular? I looked around. "He wouldn't be dressed like," I gestured vaguely to the other patrons, all dressed like punk-rockers and Dracula wanna-bes. "Just a normal jeans and t-shirt guy?" I tried again.

The vampire actually snorted, which wasn't something that came very naturally to vampires I think. Then he grinned wickedly as if he found something humorous (which made me quite nervous because you never wanna be involved in anything that a vampire might find funny- their sense of humor usually ran on the side of macabre and downright horrific) and jerked his head towards a door behind the bar marked "Employees Only." He said, still with that unnerving smirk, "Through there and on your right. They'll be expecting you, I should think."

I swallowed and thought _Oh, Lord, Jason what have you got yourself into now?_ I nodded in thanks to the bartender and headed through that door, behind which I got the strangest feeling lurked my doom.

When I got away from all the noise in the main area of the bar, I let down my barriers a bit and felt the presence of two vampires and a human in a room to my right. I recognized my brother's mental signature immediately, and his slightly muddled thoughts of _oh shit oh shit where's Hoyt oh shit that vamper girl has a nice rack oh shit are they gonna kill me what is this guy lookin' at? oh shit I'm dead dead dead. _

I took a deep breath and knocked lightly on the door. I heard a male voice say "Come in" and stepped into the room. All eyes were on me. Jason sat in front of a desk in his jeans and a plaid button-up, a few buttons undone to show off his pects. He was sweating like a whore at a Sunday sermon. A gorgeous beast of a man sat behind the desk, his long legs stretched out in front of him as he reclined in his plushy leather chair, big hands behind his blonde head, glacial blue eyes staring directly back at me. The muscles of his arms bulged under his t-shirt in a way that made me distinctly uncomfortable around the lower belly area. What! A girl has the right to look, right? The woman leaning casually on the desk gave me the once over and a predatory smile that made me want to run.

"Oh, thank you Jesus! Sook, you came, did you bring the money?"

His relief was palpable, and I almost felt sorry for him when I had to tell him, "Jason, where the hell do you think I'm gonna get fifteen thousand dollars?" He looked terrified again.

"Stackhouse, who is this lovely creature?" Big and Blonde asked, his voice a seductive pur aimed right at me. I wasn't immune, I'll admit (far from it), but the look in his eyes like a starving lion eyeing a lame zebra was like a bucket of cold water on my rising heat.

I glared at him. "I'm Sookie Stackhouse, this idiot's my brother," I answered for myself, jerking my head towards Jason, sending my long pony-tail over my shoulder. I was beyond being polite right now. Jason didn't bring out the best of me, sometimes. Neither did condescending vampires.

"Your brother?" He made a show of looking surprised, looking back and forth between us. "Oh, yes, I can see the resemblance." Somewhere, my inner fangirl took notice of his faint accent, something European. I wondered how old he was. You can never tell with vamps.

"Yeah, well, what does he owe you for?" I asked, trying to get to the negotiations.

Big and Blonde grinned, showing me fang. I just glared, hoping he would get the message that I wasn't going to be intimidated. "I loaned your brother 8K to put on a horse that he said he knew with absolute certainty would win, via inside information of course, with the assurance that he would pay me back 15 when he got the winnings. Rhett's Butler did not win." He said this with pleasure, as though this was the outcome he had been hoping for all along. Looking at him, I was sure it was.

I rounded on my brother and gave him a smack to the back of his head for good measure. "Why the hell would you do that?"

I heard it in his mind before he could open his terrified mouth. He had heard me last week tell one of the men at the bar, offhand, that I would put my money on Rhett's Butler. Jason thought it was one of my "predictions."

"Jason Stackhouse how many times do I have to tell you it doesn't work like that-!" I exploded at the same time he rushed to explain, "You wouldn't come play Poker for me, and I needed money for a new paintjob and some rims on the truck, and-!"

Can I just say, my brother, bless his heart, is not the brightest crayon in the box. He's a good man (mostly, essentially, er- I think), but he's dumb as a sack o' rocks. I looked up and noticed the vampires eyeing me with unsettling interest, watching the exchange. The woman leaned down and muttered something to the man in a foreign language. They were looking at me.

I took a deep, calming breath and stepped back from the situation. I looked at my brother, who was visibly terrified and practically trembling. He was blaming me in his mind for the whole thing. Go figure. I looked at the two vampires who were conversing quietly in a language I didn't understand, probably the point, but I could tell they were definitely talking about me. I thought of my pitiful bank account and knew in my heart I would never have fifteen thousand dollars. I thought about my Gran and all the advice she had ever given me about tough situations, but couldn't think of anything that would apply to this. Well, sometimes you've gotta think outside the box.

I squared my shoulders and marched forward, smacking my hands down on the desk and leaning over to face Big and Blonde. Their conversation interrupted, I was met with two intense blue gazes. I gave it right back what I got. "Ok, listen, Mr..."

"Eric," Big and Blonde leered fangily.

"Right, Eric. As you've probably guessed, me and my brother, we don't have fifteen thousand dollars. And I don't really have anything to give you worth fifteen thousand dollars. What I do have," I hesitated. Was this really the smart thing to do? Let a powerful vampire know you could read minds? I thought of poor, stupid, scared Jason and steeled myself. "What I do have is a very special talent."

Eric grinned and exchanged a knowing look with the woman. I had a feeling he had already begun to suspect as much. I could say one thing, he wasn't an idiot. He raked his eyes down my body as though he were thinking of some other talents I might have. I shifted uncomfortably. "Oh, do tell," he said.

I took a deep breath and let it fly. "I can hear peoples' thoughts." Immediately, I felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest. I had never admitted that out loud. Sure, everyone in town thought I was weird and knew that I just knew things that I wasn't supposed to. But no one ever talked about it out loud. No one had ever given voice to it. It was taboo, somehow, and if you said it out loud it made it true. If you said it out loud, Sookie really could read your mind.

I was slammed back to reality when the woman perked up immediately. "A telepath!" she said as if she weren't really surprised at all. "Oh, how very serendipitous!"

Serendipitous was on my Word-of-the-Day calendar a couple weeks back. I remembered because that was the day I found twenty dollars when I was cleaning under the sofa. Twenty dollars isn't much, but every little bit helps when you're a barmaid and you've got property taxes to pay.

I straightened my back and faced the intense interest of the two vampires across the desk, willing my nerves to settle.

"And what is it you want to offer us?" The lady vamp watched me like a hungry tiger ready to pounce.

"My services. I'll work for you for a fair wage until Jason's debt is paid back." I tried my best to feel as confident as I sounded. This was the only way. I had nothing else to give them worth anything.

Eric watched me for a long moment, contemplating my offer I supposed. He seemed to be thinking very hard about something, although what I couldn't fathom a guess. A tiny wrinkle appeared between his blonde brows that I had the strangest urge to smooth away with my fingers. My hands twitched.

"What do you think you can do for us, Miss Stackhouse?" he asked in a low voice, quietly dangerous.

"My dad liked to take me to business meetings. I would sit and listen and after whoever it was left, he would ask me whether or not they were lying." My eyes itched and I scrubbed them with the back of my hand. Eric didn't look entirely convinced; he was still staring into my eyes like he was trying to see the back of my head. I sighed and crossed my arms. "Ok, give me a minute."

They watched and waited for me to do something spectacular I guess, and I hoped I wouldn't disappoint them. I turned my focus inward and let down my walls. I stretched out my sixth sense as fas as it would go. I could feel all the minds of the people out in the main area of the bar. I could hear everything. I listened intently for anything that would help me, anything that would prove to them that I could be useful. I gasped.

"Oh my god!" My eyes snapped back into focus on Eric's stoney face. I smacked the desktop in excitement and fear. "The bathroom! A man just planted a bomb in the men's bathroom!"

That got their attention. The lady vamp and Eric shared a weighted look, almost as if she was asking if I was believable enough to bother with. Eric gave an almost imperceptible nod and the woman disappeared at vamp speed out the door.

It twisted my hands and shifted from foot to foot, wondering if I should just grab Jason and haul ass out of this place before it blew. I tried to remember everything I had heard in the little snippet of thought I'd gotten from the man. "He was thinking about how he hated vampires, how they deserved to die for being an abomination to God, and everyone in the bar for associating with them. I think he might have been with the Fellowship." The Fellowship of the Sun was a group of religious extremists who thought vampires were damned and needed to be eradicated. I didn't think much of them.

Eric's cell phone rang. It sounded like some jaunty circus tune. I giggled, which I do at inappropriate times when tension is high. He exchanged a few short words with whoever was at the other end and looked mighty angry when he flipped it shut.

"Well, Miss Stackhouse, it seems your services could be very useful to us. I had not imagined the possible applications of a telepath," he seemed to say the last part almost to himself. Then he stood up from his seat, raising to his full and very impressive height. He seemed to fill the whole room. He stepped around the desk and came to stand nearly chest-to-chest with me, forcing me to crane my neck to keep eye contact with him. His body was so close my nipples might brush against him. I forced myself to keep my head in the game.

He lifted one large hand and brushed his fingers up my throat. I didn't flinch. "You cannot sense the thoughts of vampires, can you Miss Stackhouse." It was more a statement than a question. He took my silence as affirmitive, I guess. He grinned something scary. "I thought not."

He walked around to the other side of the desk and took his seat again. "Ok, Miss Stackhouse, your brother is free to go."

Jason, who I had completely forgotten was still there up until this point, hopped up out of his seat like he'd been waiting for those words. He grabbed me in a fierce hug, thanking me profusely, and was out the door before I could get in two words. I was too angry to do anything but shake my head. "Jack-ass."

I sighed and turned back to Eric, ready to negotiate my terms of employment. I wondered how I was going to be able to pay my bills with the hours I'd have to cut at work in order to work here too. It was a worrying prospect.

Suddenly, I was looking at the floor, slung over Eric's shoulder. I screamed. "What-!" Words fought eachother to escape my mouth. "What the fuck are you doing! Put me down!" I screamed in a panic and beat on his back. It was a bit like punching a brick wall. He squeezed my thigh painfully in warning. I just screamed louder.

He was taking me down a dark starewell. Panic began to cloud my mind. Where was he taking me? Why?

The world spun around me and my butt hit the cold cement. I was in a basement. I struggled as hard as I could but his hands around my wrists were steel. I tried to kick but he only moved behind me to hold me tight against his chest and I felt cold metal close around my neck. I screamed and cussed and kicked, but he paid me no more mind than he would a wriggling worm in his hand. Tears were hot on my cheeks. He disappeared in the darkness, back up the stairwell, and took the thin shaft of light with him when he shut the door behind him.

It was pitch dark in the basement. I pulled at the metal collar around my neck, but couldn't pry it off of me. I threw myself to the end of my short length of chain. I found where it connected to the wall, but it was made to hold creatures much stronger than a curvy barmaid from Bon Temps. I screamed until I was hoarse but I couldn't even hear the thumping of the music upstairs. In a few hours, the thoughts of the humans upstairs left me too and I was left in complete silence, alone and cold and unable to see my own hand in front of my face. I continued to scream and sob and shiver in the dark, but no one came.


	2. Thoughts in the Dark

I woke up and for a moment forgot where I was. It was still pitch dark. It was a little cold. There was something heavy and restricting around my neck. My hands found the positively mideival iron collar. Oh, yeah. I was in the basement of a vampire bar in Shreveport.

I started to cry again. I didn't know what else to do. It didn't seem like I had any hope at all of getting out of this situation. Would someone come looking for me? Would they even know where to look? Jason and Hoyt would know where I was, when it was discovered that I was missing. And dispite everything, I thought that Jason would definitely realize in the next couple of days that I wasn't in Bon Temps and he would come looking for me. When I didn't show up for work today (was it today? How long had I slept?), Sam, my boss, would call around to find out where I was. I had never missed a day of work without calling in to let Sam know. That was just bad manners. Sam would know this. He would realize it was unusual. He would call Jason. Jason would come looking for me, or maybe he would even report me missing to Andy Bellefleur and the whole Bon Temps police force (all four of them) would come to get me out of this horrid little dungeon. Ok, so I didn't hold out much hope for that last scenario. But Jason, he would definitely come back for me when he realized something was wrong.

Until then, I had to pull myself together and formulate a plan of escape. I scrubbed at my eyes and swallowed another wave of tears. I had to think straight. I had to get my head in the game. Ok, here were the facts.

I was in a dungeon. What little I had been able to see of it before the door had shut and taken the light, there was a concrete floor, quite dirty, and weird chains and manacles and devices that I didn't really want to contemplate attached all around the little room on the walls and the ceiling and the floor. The chains qualified it as a dungeon, I thought, instead of just a regular old basement.

I was put here because... Well, I don't really know why. It was probably a direct consequence of opening my big mouth and telling a powerful vampire that I could read minds. I knew it was risky and I knew there might be consequences to my actions that I could not have accounted for, but I was left with no choice. There was no other way out of the situation with my brother and Eric, no other way to save Jason. And I do believe that I had saved his life when I volunteered myself to Eric, no questions there. I didn't know exactly what he did with punks who couldn't pay their debts, but I'd seen enough Mafia movies to know it wouldn't be anything good.

I thought that maybe I had acted a bit rashly. I had been naive to think all vampires were at heart decent people. Bill had been decent. Mostly. He had cheated on me, sure, and broken my heart seven ways to Sunday but that's just normal guy stuff, right? This, this was on a whole other level. This was inhuman. It was un-American.

But Eric was very obviously not like Bill. I had been foolish to think I could deal with Eric on my own, like a normal human being. I had been naive to think that he saw me the same way I saw myself, as his equal. The way he had thrown me over his shoulder like a sac of flour, how he had manhandled me without a word, without an explanation, chained me up down here like an animal, like something less than human, something without feelings. No, Eric did not see us as equals.

The dark and the quiet were starting to get to me, and some very personal needs were making themselves known, but I very much doubted there was a toilet anywhere down here. The floor felt damp and gritty under my butt. I shifted around to find a more comfortable spot. I strained my eyes into the darkness, trying to see anything. I thought I heard something not very far away, maybe a chain rattling. My heart immediately sped up. "Hello?" I asked the darkness. No answer.

I looked around me intently, but it was so black I wondered if I even had my eyes open. Was something moving on the floor? I squinted. Something long, slithering across the cement, coming towards me. A snake! I yelped and shot up to my feet, smacking my head on some low-hanging metal something. I grabbed my head in pain and my eyes teared up again. The snake was gone.

Was I going crazy? I had read an article somewhere about sensory deprivation, about how people would start hallucinating when they were deprived of any sensory input. But how long did that take? How long had I been down here? It seemed like days, but I just didn't know.

I felt something on the edge of my senses. On the edge of my "other" sense, to be exact. A mind. Jolted, I reached out for it, clung to it like a life-ring at sea. It was coming closer. It was a woman. There was a foreign quality to her thoughts, like she wasn't from here.

What some people don't understand is that people don't think in any certain language. I can read a Spanish person's mind just as well as an English-speaking person's. People don't think in words for the most part, they think in concepts. I percieve these concepts, these ideas and I can translate them into language. It's hard to explain. In any case, this girl was thinking something like _asshole! make me come out here in the middle of the day I've got shit to do I'm not on the clock what the fuck does he mean take care of the woman in the basement what is Eric doing keeping a woman down there I don't want to know and why the fuck does he think I'll need a gun?_

A flash of panic had my whole body tensing up before I forced myself to think through what I had heard from her head. Ok, so she had a gun, and she had been thinking about a woman in the basement (that's me!), but she didn't seem to know why she was ordered to bring a gun. From the way she thought about Eric, I had to assume she was an employee of his, a human employee obviously. Eric had given her orders to "take care of" me.

Oh god, did that mean she was supposed to kill me? Yep, the panic was back. That's what they always said in the movies about Mobsters when they were gonna kill somebody. But why did he want to kill me? He said so himself that I would be useful, he wouldn't kill me, right? It didn't make sense! Ok, ok, maybe she was just here to actually take care of me. Maybe like bring me some food and show me where the toilet was, for God's sake! Well, that just made me sound like the pet dog, huh? Feed her and take her out to pee like a nice little pet, that's me.

She was right above me now, I could sense her mind as she moved around the bar. I heard a heavy door unlocking and opening and light flooded the stairwell. I sucked in a breath and threw an arm over my eyes, the sudden light stinging them in the darkness. She was coming down the stairs now.

Thinking so fast it was almost instinct (I had always been pretty plucky, if I do say so myself, and my wit had gotten me out of quite a few tight spots in my day) I picked up my lenghth of chain and clutched it to my chest so it wouldn't make a sound when I moved. I slid behind a pillar, quiet as a breeze, so light I fancied my feet had barely touched the floor. I calmed my breathing, focused on making it as silent as possible. I never would have gotten away with it if this had been a vampire, but this was just a normal human. I waited.

"Hey, woman!" she said now from the bottom of the stairs. She had a thick accent, something European I think. I couldn't see her, but I heard her take a couple of steps forward in some heels. Her thoughts were still centered around annoyance with Eric, the gun in her purse, and wondering where I was. Ok, so I knew she didn't have the gun drawn. That was good. I wouldn't give her time to.

She continued to step further into the basement, peeking around the equipment and straining her eyes into the darkness, looking for any sign of a woman. When she stepped past the pillar I was hidden behind, I attacked.

I jumped behind her and put the chain around her neck and pulled before she could even scream. "I'm so sorry, I don't want to hurt you!" I told her, and truthfully I didn't. But, well, I'm a survivor first and foremost. And short of killing (an innocent person) or betraying a friend, there is nothing I won't do to survive. You learn things about yourself when you're dealing with vampires that you never would otherwise, like just how far you would go to protect your own life. I had learned this lesson the hard way.

She dropped her purse and gripped the chain with both hands, trying to pull it away from her throat. Another thing funny thing is that you never know how strong you can be until you're in a life-or-death situation. She fell to her knees, still struggling weakly, but she was about to pass out. Or at least I hoped. Because no matter my convictions, it was getting difficult to keep this up in all good conscience (what was left of it, my god I was a horrible person) when she was making such awful noises.

Finally, she went limp. As soon as I heard her brain click out, I loosened the chain and eased her to the ground. "Oh, I'm so sorry," I told her unconscious form. "I know you're not really a bad person and you were just doing this on orders, but it was either me or you, and I choose me." I felt her neck for a pulse and hovered my hand over her nose to feel her breath. She was still alive. I sighed in relief. If I had killed her, I really don't know how I would have lived with myself.

"Ok, ok, what now?" I tried to steady my breathing. "Keys!" I grabbed her purse and sure enough, there was a ridiculously huge iron key ring with a huge, old key on it that looked like it had come straight out of a movie set in the 1800s. If I wasn't more than a little frazzled, considering I had just strangled a lady into unconciousness, I might have taken a moment to appreciate the awful cheeseyness of this whole dungeon set-up this Eric had going on. As it was, I just fiddeled around in the lock on the back of my neck for a long minute before the collar was released. I sighed in relief when the weight of it left my neck. The damn thing must have weighed ten pounds at least, not to mention the chain!

Having finally freed myself, I paused indecisively. I grabbed her purse again and set aside the little handgun I knew I'd find inside. Then, I lifted the woman's head and slid her purse under it as a pillow. That's what you're suppose to do for an unconcious person, right? To help blood flow, or something, or maybe just to make them comfortable. I don't really know.

I snatched the gun up and bolted up the stairs. When I got to the top, I took a right in the hallway and headed straight for the head-vamp's office, thinking my keys and my cell phone had to be in there. Damnit! The door was locked! I quickly thought about shooting the deadbolt with the gun, but I didn't really think it would work, and the bullet could ricochet or I could be hit with shrapnel besides. Ok, what now? On a whim, checked the door sill for a key and shook my head at myself when I didn't find one.

Well, there had to be a phone out in the bar, right? There's nothing like a fresh rush of adrenaline to keep you thinking fast. I headed out to the main area and looked behind the bar, quickly locating a wall phone. I mentally cheered and laid the gun on the counter before picking up the phone. I hesitated, wondering if I should call the police or my brother. Well, the obvious choice was the police, but if they really looked into this they would find that my brother was in some seedy dealings with these vampires in the first place and he could get in trouble. Or could he? Had he really done anything illegal? I wished I had my cell phone so I could call Sam; I didn't know his number off the top of my head.

While I was considering my choices, I had apparently been so engrossed mentally that I hadn't noticed the woman's mind click back on downstairs, or that she had snuck up behind me. Hey, I'm a telepath, alright, but that doesn't make me immune to carelessness! I only heard an excited sort of mental uproar from directly behind me a split second before something blunt connected with the back of my skull and the world went black.

...

I don't know how long I was knocked out, but I do know that when I finally came to my head was pounding. I woke up on the floor behind the counter of the bar where I had fallen, and when I peeked open my eyes the woman was standing over me with the gun pointed at me. I groaned. "So close."

"You shut up!" She waved the gun at me threateningly, which wasn't all that impressive since her hands were shaking and it was obvious she had never really used one before. Still, a gun in the hands of even an idiot could be dangerous. I could see some dark bruises around her throat and wanted to apologize, but more than that I was angry. I rolled gingerly to my feet, keeping my eyes on her the whole time. My vision swam in front of me as all the blood rushed back to my head and I put a hand on the counter to steady myself, trying not to let her see my weakness.

I tried not to make any fast movements for fear of the quivering gun in her hands, but glared at her all the same. "Listen- ma'am! I don't know what your boss has told you but I'm being kept here _against my will. _That's illegal, you know! And when I get hold of the police, Eric is going to vampire jail! But, listen, I don't think you really want to hurt me. I think you're just doing what you're told," I tried to reason with her, lowering my voice to a less angry decible. "If you help me get out of here, I won't press charges against you."

She just looked at me like I was crazy, which wasn't a look I was entirely unused to. "You choked me, you little bitch!"

"I know, and I'm awful sorry for that!" I tried to placate her.

"Well, you are not getting out of this place! Eric wants you kept here, and if I let you get away he will kill me," she was calming down now, her shoulders relaxing. She looked almost regretful. As she looked me over, I could see in her mind that she felt sorry for me and wished she could let me go. But her fear of Eric was a lot stronger than any urges of altruism.

Giving up for the moment, I felt the back of my head and was relieved not to find blood, only a knot that was getting bigger by the minute, but I could deal with that.

"My name is Sookie," I told her, remembering my manners. I held out my hand to shake, but she just looked at it distrustfully. Well, couldn't really blame her there. I did try to strangle her just a little while ago.

"Yvetta," she answered simply, her accent stronger when she said it.

"Nice to meet you." Well, this was kind of awkward. I grinned nervously. "Um, what did Eric send you here for exactly?" I asked, cautiously shifting from foot to foot. Damn, but I had to pee like a derby horse.

As if remembering herself, her back snapped straight and she gestured with the gun to the restrooms at the far end of the bar. "I will let you use the bathroom. And I brought you some food and a drink. But then I have to take you back downstairs," she said apologetically. I just sighed and did as she told, heading towards the bathrooms gratefully. She waited outside the door with the gun presumably.

After I took care of my business in the stall (I knew the definition of relief now), I took my time washing my hands at the sink and looking myself over in the mirror. I was a mess. My ponytail was all askew, my hair was dirty and tangled, I had circles under my eyes and I was my clothes were filthy from sleeping on that nasty cement floor. I scowled at my reflection and rinsed my face off. I combed through my hair with my fingers and tried my best to make it look some semblance of clean. By the time I left the bathroom, I felt a little more human.

Yvetta was waiting for me at the bar. She had somehow produced some McDonalds for me and I sat down and dug in gratefully. A greasy burger and too-salty fries had never tasted so good.

"So, you work for Eric?" I asked Yvetta. She was leaned against the wall behind the bar, watching me eat. Maybe a little conversation would make this situation less uncomfortable.

"Yes, I am a dancer here." I looked over her skimpy outfit and bright red heels that I would have broken my neck in. Ok, a dancer. At the same time she was staring at me contemplatively. She cocked her head to the side in puzzlement. "Why are you in the basement?" she asked me cautiously.

She was thinking that I was very pretty, but could use a shower and some make-up. (Thanks for that, as if I wasn't painfully aware of my dirty state after a night in the dungeon). She was also suspicous that maybe Eric was trying to replace her. I shuddered. My gran would kill me.

"I don't really know," I told her truthfully. "I made a... deal with Eric, and then he just chained me up down there with no explanation!" I clenched my fists as I remembered my fury from the night before. "Like I was a dog!"

She gave me a pitying look that I didn't much care for. Her posture relaxed even more and she leaned forward. "Sweetheart, let me give you some advice," she said in her thick accent. I think it was Russian. "This little bar here is a castle, and Eric is the King. Here, you are dog. He is cunning and he is ruthless. He does not think like us, like human. He owns you now, and if you are smart you will not... what is the words, 'make waves.'"

Well that just got my hackles up. "Nobody _owns_ me! This is America, for God's sake!"

Yvetta just shook her head. "Vampire is vampire, no matter what country. Human laws have no power here. Eric's word _is_ law. Remember that, and you may survive."

I finished my meal in angry silence, stewing over what she had said. I had only ever met a few vampires in my life, and I knew they were different, but Bill was never like this. Bill wasn't human, sure, and he was maybe a little scary sometimes, but... Well, he had had some common decency! He had treated me with respect and dignity! He had never looked at me like he thought he was better than me, like I was anything less than his equal. Could Yvetta be right? Was this the real face of vampires? Was my Bill (Lord, I hadn't thought of him like that in a long time) the exception and not the rule?

When Yvetta led me back down into the basement, kind enough to leave me with a glass of water and a flashlight, she told me that Eric would be back at sundown, in just a few hours. Instead of the iron collar, she let me wear a manacle around one of my ankles, which was at least a little more dignified. She said she was sorry, but that was the most she could do for me without getting in a lot of trouble, and I thanked her for that. When she finally left me to my thoughts, I settled in for the wait for Eric. I thought of all the things I would say to him when I saw him. And boy did I have alot to say.


End file.
